Prior to the present invention, the typing of identity and/or descriptive data or comments or the like onto microfilm jackets has been a tedious and pains taking job, difficult and slow, requiring many work hours of a typist in the picking-up of a single flimsy plastic microfilm jacket from a pile or stack thereof, with difficulty mounting the same evenly within a platen mounting mechanism of a typewriter, followed by repetitive typing-out of the desired message, dismounting the typed microfilm jacket from the typewriter platen, and stacking the same for later insertion of contents, or stopping to make insertion at that time. Such above-noted consecutive procedures are totally disruptive by their very nature, of shifting from one aspect to the other, acceptable speed being virtually impossible. Because of the recent large number of microfilms produced to be placed in identifying microfilm jackets, the task of typing-on the labeling onto such microfilm jackets has required the assigning of numerous person to such tasks, taking these persons out of much more productive and profitable tasks.
Moreover, because of the high amount of static electricity associated with such conventional plastic microfilm jackets, together with their very flimsy and bendable nature, the picking-up, insertion into a printer, the transporting and the stacking thereof, as well as automatically aligned inserting in proper alignment of a transported microfilm jacket into a typewriter or printer platen guide or platen roller-bite, followed by proper and aligned advancing to a printing position, each and all have provided almost insurmountable problems in efforts to achieve a commercially acceptable and adequately operable automated unit. In fact, it is known that several large corporations have made such attempts, followed by failure and abandonment of the projects.
More particularly, a microfilm jacket is a unitized microfilm designed to accept 16 mm or 35 mm film strips for the purposes of consolidating a short roll film record into fiche format.
The jacket face, by the nature of its design, incorporates various sleeves for film insertion as well as a "header" or "title" area designed to accept written information for the purpose of identifying or commenting on contents of the jacket.
Current methods of titling jackets employ handwriting to a small degree as well as normally typwriting the information thereon. Each of these methods, as above-noted, has proved to be labor intensive, and therefor very expensive from the standpoint of required man hours.
Some alternative current or conventional methods of titling are:
(1) Pressure Sensitive labels: This facilitates use of a computer printer and software. Print speed is a direct result of the speed of the printer being used. The obvious disadvantage to this prior method is the cost of the labels as well as the labor involved in applying them to the jacket title area. PA1 (2) "Tip On" jackets or continuous form: This method employs a technique whereby jackets are glued onto computer printout paper. The forms are then placed through a printer and with the appropriate software, are printed at computer speed. The disadvantages of this method are that these forms typically add 40 percent to 60 percent additional cost to the jacket. Additionally, jackets must be removed from the printout paper once titled. This obviously adds cost to the form of additional labor.
Both of the above mentioned methods do increase speed of titling, but at considerable additional recurring costs.